If you think about it, nothings lasts forever ! I know it might be an obvious statement but does this law of physics apply to the way human beings live their lives? And if so what causes this?
The Universe is about 14.6 billion years old and was created after the Big Bang but what existed before to cause the Big Bang? Well maybe it was the remains of an old Universe that had died due to its age and the old energy eventually caused a huge explosion. I don’t know and I am no where near an expert on the subject but it makes you think because everything has a “shelf life”. Nothing lasts forever. This same physical law also seems to apply to the lives of humans. Is there some sort of physical law that says its time for renewal. A bit like Doctor Who and his re-generation!
I was thinking about history in particular and the way some societies become powerful and then go into decline. Way back in 3150BC the Egyptian Empire was in full swing under the Pharaoh’s. Egypt ruled the world and was all powerful until about 30BC when it became a Roman province. Egypt had a huge army that could defeat anybody and it had invented many things such as mining and writing. It also built many amazing monuments like temples and pyramids. I think they were also early Mathematicians.
At this time Greece also had its own empire and in 332AD Greece conquered Egypt and imposed its own way of life.
By 400AD Egypt had become The Byzantine Empire and was increasingly turning to the East. By 639AD Egypt had been captured by a large force of Arabs and Muslims and the Egyptian way of life, including its government, and even its language, disappeared.
The Roman Empire was, of course, thought to be invincible as well but that only lasted 500 years.
There have been other Empires. Even the British had its own which lasted maybe 200 years at best.
Europe is an Empire of sorts, although not as powerful as previous ones but the common factor is that none of these lasted forever and in most cases they ceased to exist at all. I’m not saying that Europe will cease to exist but it will change, of that there is do doubt because everything seems to have a limited life. Not just planets, animals, humans and everything else but actual ways of life. Maybe this is natures way of improving things and will the British way of life eventually disappear as we know it to be replaced with something else? I think the answer is a certain “yes it will”.
There was a very interesting magazine article about the rise and fall of the Roman Empire on the BBC website and you can read it here. The article does ask the question about why the Roman Empire failed and it says that complex societies like the Roman ones are run by people and are then actually brought down by the same people.
But why are the people responsible for a failed empire? Well, it seems that the gap between rich and poor is a major reason. This leads to a loss of group feeling toward the state or a loss of a common cause that leads to dissatisfaction and a breakdown in social order followed by system collapse.
Everything self destructs. Is Europe about to be part of this destructive mechanism caused by the gap between rich and poor and the fact that nothing lasts forever?
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